Ah, the heady, slow tempo,the sonnet of June --
with summer stretched out in a languorous tune,
her notes sweetly pedaled and perfumed with sighs,
she vows lazy mornings and evenings sublime.
With a go-nowhere-fast song, she’s pool-water chill,
for screen-porch rain listening and napping your fill.
Crack open the book spines, the bottles of wine,
and relish her at-ease, adagio time.
Wake up to slow measures, dipped silver with dew,
as deer tap staccato while tiptoeing through.
At dusk, come the cymbals in lightning bug sets
of quivering selfies that make you forget
next month, bringing emails with pre-planning news,
and all the bleak back-to-school rhythm and blues.
We celebrated the seniors last night, and now summer is here. It’s time to recover. And boy, do I need to recover. It feels like there’s sludge in my shins and sawdust in my stem cells. I ache from overuse.
But the grass is newly green, the sky’s a sun-drenched blue, and the summer stretches out like a deck chair reserved just for me. It’s time to slow down. Time to feel the sun on skin, the clover beneath toes, and a heartful and houseful of family and friends.
I can take long walks and even longer naps. I can taste homegrown tomatoes and sip store-bought wine. I can float in the pool and lounge on the porch. I can read in a swing and write on the patio. I can bake with the boys and hold hands with my husband. I can host barbecue and pajama parties.
I can rejuvenate my mind, so I can prepare for my final year of teaching. I’ve got just one more year..
I was trying to calculate how many students I’ve taught throughout this journey. How many “babies” I’ve mothered in all that time. And from my calculations – and math is not my strong suit, so it’s probably an underestimate — I’m thinking it’s been close to 4,500. Forty-five hundred angst-riddled, hormone-fueled, drama-driven teenagers. Multiply that times the myriad of emotions and behaviors that fuel a classroom on any given day, along with hours of lectures and lessons and the number of assignments to grade and you understand why summer recovery is a very real necessity.
Teaching is exhausting. It’s challenging. It’s overwhelming. It is.
But it’s also feeling exhausted and challenged and overwhelmed and unbelievably proud with a heart bursting with love and gratitude for all your kids and their accomplishments when they cross that stage in late May to a cacophony of tears and air horns and applause.
If you do it right, it’s worth every ounce of energy. If you do it right, it’s your calling.
There’s a reason I hunker down on my porch in the summer – the only season of quiet that exists in my life.
Through June and July, I sip at the slow, sultry, syrup of summer like an addict, soaking my marrow in its sweetness, doing my best to bottle it in memory so I’m sustained when it’s gone — which happens tomorrow.
Tomorrow, summer leaves me.
And I pray there’s enough liquor of peace in my core to help me remember that it won’t always be like it’s about to be —
where time (and I) will take a beating:
a brutal, full-on assault of seconds bruising and buckling into
minutes, bleeding into pulpy, pulverized
hours, shredding to hard, dusty
days, bled dry into
months completely exsanguinated, drought-fed, and strung out like jerky, tough and leathery and jerking me around, seeming without end.
And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow spins out in its frenzied pace of work and
acting class and
football practice
followed by homework somehow and then
work again and lesson plans and
voice lessons and
football and
homework somehow somewhere and — I forgot about dinner! and
again work and lesson plans and teaching and
piano lessons this time and
football and homework where? when does it get done? and dinner how? and
here’s work once more and lesson plans and teaching and
Wednesday afternoon laundry and help me Jesus! homework and maybe dinner for real, a table and everything and
dance class and
football and maybe homework and maybe snacks instead of dinner and – showers dang it! we can’t forget showers – and
God help me, I’m going under and I forgot all about grading and feedback and
now it’s time for the Friday Night Lights that stretch and twist and warp like an elastic band thinner and thinner until they catapult us finally into
Saturday and more football and laundry, and
hair appointments maybe? and grocery shopping somehow? and selfcare, is that even a thing? HA! and
… and Sunday, bless-ed, blesss-ed Sunday – breathe in, breathe out on thank God for recovery Sunday, but
no husband, no daddy, no real time with just us at all and then, oh God! here we go again and
rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.
And tomorrow, it begins.
I’m scared y’all. This year, I’m really, so very afraid that I’m not ready.
So here I sit on my porch shot-gunning as much of the final sweet seconds of summer as I possibly can. And trying my best not to panic and and and andandandandandandandand…GULP!
I don’t think it’s working.
Yesterday was my last day of summer vacation before teacher pre-planning began. My last day to relax and recharge. And I did just that.
I finally used the massage gift certificate Mike got me for a Valentine’s Day gift. (What? I’m only five months late…)
The massage was marvelous. I don’t know what took me so long. Yes I do… TWINS. Still, it was well worth the wait.
To be honest, I was more than a little anxious about this appointment, though. For the first time ever, I had a male massage therapist. And considering you’re kind of naked and vulnerable on that table — along with the fact I was raised in a cult where skin is akin to original sin — this was a giant step outside my comfort zone.
His name was Wesley, I reasoned, as I settled beneath the sheets, candles flickering lazily and zen music playing softly. Wesley is such a non-assuming, more-than-slightly-Methodist name, so what’s to worry? That, plus the splashing water sounds and chirping birdcalls helped set my mind at ease.
Turns out, there was no need to worry, whatsoever. Wesley was a perfect gentleman and a perfect massage therapist. I was always appropriately sheeted or toweled and completely at ease (mostly).
I presented quite the challenge to poor little Methodist Wesley’s protestant work ethic. I had more knots in my back than a macrame hammock, and today I kind of feel like I got stretched taut between trees until the hammock unravelled. It’s all good, though, I told him to get them out. And he did. The knots screamed; I screamed. Eventually, they succumbed and I survived.
After the trauma, I relaxed into an awesome foot massage. Now, my favorite part of any massage is always the foot part of a massage. I love it more than warm banana pudding, and that’s saying a lot. Now some of you like cold banana pudding, and that’s saying a lot, too. Like how wrong you are, and how you probably like chardonnay (and even sugar in your cornbread, too). But, whatever. You’re wrong and foot massages are all that is right in this world.
But the surprising part of yesterday’s massage — the part I loved the absolute most — was a really weird technique I’d never encountered before. I’ll call it Red Bull…
So I was lying on my back, the sheet smooth once again — its myriad of origami massage pleats deconstructed — and the session complete. Or so I thought.
It was then Wesley returned to the crown of my head, placed both his hands, palms up, under my shoulders and slid them all the way down to my kidneys. It was weird and uncomfortable. Number one — because it felt like my back was straddling train tracks, and number two — because Wesley’s chin was directly above my face. I could feel his breath. It was awkward as fundamentalism.
But then he pulled his arms backward, lifting my body with his hands as he went. It was like sails being unfurled from somewhere spiny and cramped in my center, like wings being unwound. I was in metamorphosis, and it was marvelous.
I emerged from the spa yesterday afternoon like a newborn moth, all limp and relaxed and blinking blindly in the sun, every tendon and blood vessel traceable beneath translucent skin.
Red Bull. It gives you wings.
Go see Wesley and get your wings.
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